Junten Junior High School / Senior High School

12/01/2015

After a typhoon has passed, the weather turned out to be just perfect. What kind of home stay experience did the students have? 

Now students moved from CFF’s Children Home to the village to experience homestay local families’ homes. Initially they showed anxiety about staying at a local family home, but after having good homestay experience, they looked happy and content.

Students stayed at Sari Sari Store said “hi” to a cow

On the way back to Children Home, students stopped by a family near the Home.  The family was having breakfast and they invited the Junten students to join them.

Student Y: “My honest feeling was that I was a little hesitant to stay at a house in a rural area, but my host-family was very kind and sweet. I felt ashamed about feeling hesitant.”

★　★　★

Today in Baquioen, Junten students are planning to have several activities that they were organizing since last year for the children and local villagers.  In the morning, four local high school students in the Baquioen village came to volunteer. Junten students do not have the Filipino skills, so it is hard to explain the children about the activity and the purpose of it. So the high school students from Baquioen worked as translators and facilitated the conversations in Filipino and English.

Students and children are at meeting, talking about the activity and songs they sing in the activity.

Junten students showing how to draw.

Students learning Filipino to make a questionnaire.

  On the day of the activity, a journalist from Philippines Daily Inquirer came to cover the activity at Children Home.  The journalist was interviewing the students and children.

  After the activity, students and children were planning to make sandwiches for the local people in the village. The Children Home staff had already informed about the sandwich lunch, so villagers came to join the lunch in the backyard.

  As an ice breaking activity,  the children and students played popular games of Japan, first one is Musical Chairs.

  Next, they played another popular Japanese game similar to Duck, Duck, Goose.　The penalty of the game is to eat umeboshi. Japanese students assumed that Filipino do not like tart food, but they do like them. Local children asked an interesting question, “why the person who lose can get food?” In the end, all the participants ate umeboshi.

At the day care next to the backyard, children draw pictures, “My Dream.” Local high school student volunteers explained to the children in Filipino.  

Junten students were worried if the children enjoys drawing of not, but everyone enjoyed the activity.  

Student T: I was a little worried about the activities we prepared may not be liked by the children, but children really had a great time, so I was very happy.  Most of the dreams were something like; “I want to build a house that I can live with my family”, “I want to go to school to be a teacher.”

Finally, children learned a song that is about washing hands and Junten students will talk about the importance of washing hands. Junten students have researched about public hygiene and the research project is here.

Children and students washing work together and build friendship.

 Local high school students helped complete the survey.

Children, villagers, local volunteer high school students and Junten students finished the sandwiches and they stayed at the House until the evening.

★　★　★

Today is the last night at the Children Home.  After dinner, there was a farewell party and Junten students had a great time with the local students, children and people.